Echo
by Nehszriah
Summary: The Doctor has been wandering for so long that he no longer feels like himself, until he comes across a familiar face just by chance. Set between Death in Heaven and Last Christmas. [12/Echo!Clara]


A/N: Sometimes, when I have the availability to fulfill prompts, I open up a window of time for people to submit an idea to my writing tumblr. This is the product of one of those times.

The prompt for this one involved Twelve running into an alien echo of Clara.

* * *

Echo

He had wandered so far, so long, he lost sense of time. For a time _traveler_ he never was very good about that little detail to begin with, but his adventures with Clara made him hone in on that little character flaw and work on it. He had time down to a precise science with her, except for when it involved coffee for some reason, and now all that progress was gone, lost with Gallifrey and the first face his face saw.

At least, he thought she was gone.

"Clara?!" the Doctor gasped, turning around in the busy marketplace. He had just caught a glimpse of her, out of the corner of his eye, making his blood run cold in his veins. Pushing through the crowd frantically, he found her at a jewelry stand. Her flowing Ultarian robes were a shimmering red, her face marked in the green swirls of a native tribe, and her hair had been chopped short just below the ear… but it was still Clara.

"Uh, can I help you?" she asked, turning her attention towards him. The Doctor paused for a moment and the realization that he was gawking hit him.

"I, erm, I'm sorry, but you're Clara Oswald, aren't you?" he replied, the tips of his ears burning.

"Do I know you?" She took a step back, attempting to size up the stranger before her. "Where have I seen you before?"

"Out and about," he said. The Doctor thought for a moment and grew a little bolder. "In another life, in your dreams. You've dreamt me, haven't you?" Her eyes went wider than they already were and her lips parted in shock.

"Hey, lady, is this guy bothering you?" the stall vendor, a large and meaty man with metallic-gold skin, asked. She looked over at him and shook her head, though barely.

"No," she said. "He… he's… it's just been a long time, I almost didn't recognize him." She latched on to the Doctor's arm and pulled him close. "Thank you for your concern; goodbye." With that, she began to lead her companion through the throngs of people buzzing about the marketplace.

"I didn't ask you to run away with me," he gasped. The Doctor tried to bend down to be closer to her ear, but the angle was awkward and only served to force him to trip over himself like he was still wearing that tweedy jacket and passé bowtie. "Can't you walk any slower?"

"Can't you _think_?!" she snapped. "What in the world are you doing, approaching a random woman in the market here? You can get in serious trouble for that here in Tarkas Tars!"

"Long story, involves Gangers, or at least I wish they were Gangers because it would be less horrifying that way I suppose." He allowed himself to be pulled along, not resisting in the slightest. "Not that I mind, but where are we going?"

The Clara Echo steered them into an alleyway and wrenched her arm away from him, spinning around to face him. "Here, where you are going to tell me _exactly_ why you know that you've been appearing in my dreams, and know my name, and why your eyes are so sad when you look at me."

A prolonged silence sat between them before he looked down at his feet sheepishly. "That wasn't a dream, because that was your other life, one of your other _lives_, and you spend them with me."

"…and why is my other self not with you _now_, hmm?" She tapped her foot and rested her fists on her hips.

"That you… no longer needed me."

"Well, I don't care what you're selling because I'm not some man's replacement goldfish, even if I _have_ seen someone like you in my dreams," Echo Clara replied. "Now I'm going to leave and you are going to count to fifty, slowly, and then you can go back to wherever you came from, yeah?" She looked at him and sighed dejectedly, approaching him long enough to leave a kiss on his cheek. "I'm not her, no matter how much we may look alike or act the same."

"…but you _are_ her, a part of her that's been scattered across the universe…"

"Even so, we did not grow up in the same environment, have the same experiences, live the same lives. Your Clara Oswald is not me, and I'm sorry." She gave him a gentle smile before slipping back into the crowd again.

_One. Two_. How could this happen? _Twelve_. An echo never turned him away before. _Thirty-one_. He never should have even tried_. Thirty-nine_. Clara was lost to him; there was no going back to her or her Echoes now. _Forty-five_. Now what?

_Fifty_.

The Doctor wandered his way back through the crowd until he found the TARDIS again. He shut the door behind him and hit the controls that brought him into the vortex. Sitting, alone, in the darkness and solitude of the time vortex—yes, that's what he needed. He needed to sort himself out before moving on. If Clara could do it, why couldn't he?

Well, he could have _tried_, had it not been for an infernal, not to mention mysterious, knock at his door.

"Hello? Doctor? You know it can't end like that. We need to get this sorted, and quickly."


End file.
